My Piece of the Pie (2011)

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Best movie ever!

A Brilliant Conflict

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Leftie social comedy.Are there any French movie directors that aren't left of Che Guevara? This leftie social comedy was entertaining to me because I liked the bad guys--the British Hedge fund founder was priceless.Although well filmed and watchable--the leftie political stuff comes at you like a non stop jack hammer and mostly ruins it. It is the story of driven greedy financiers and the out of luck (all good of course) workers of companies closed by these ruthless villains.The working class is represented by Karin Viard playing France LeRoi * (The King) and the hedge fund types by Gilles Lellouche as Steve Delarue * (literally from the street). France is thrown out of work and attempts suicide when her company is taken over and looted by the financiers including Delarue. She gets herself together and lands a job as a house keeper for Delarue. He eventually beds her and she overhears him bragging about it on the phone--angry and hurt (they have fallen for each other) she kidnaps his son and forces him to come pick him up and see the human damage his financial deals cause.In the end the workers attack the police who have arrested France and take after Delarue to lynch him.Even though a comedy this movie is 50 shades too political to really enjoy unless you do what I did and cheer on the villains. For this reason it got a 4.

My Piece of the Pie (2011)You're going to want to like this movie because at first it seems like a love story waiting to happen, then it seems like the perfect revenge story waiting to happen. But neither is quite true, and the pieces never quite hang together for a great totality.The conflict is built around an unlikely but likable coincidence—a man hires a woman to take care of his apartment and child and it turns out she once worked for a company he helped ruin. That is, she's stuck cleaning houses because of him. That's something withheld in fact until near the end of the movie, but you see it coming, and the clash of cultures is there even as they tentatively fall in love (at least physically).This kind of meeting of spirits in unlikely ways is good foundation. And the woman in particular is a complex, interesting type, well acted. So the whole unfolding is pretty fun, and there are some quirks and personalities as you go that make it believable even when it shouldn't be.What happens near the end is a climax that should have been terrific, a kind of great resolution and happy conclusion. But it's more ambitious than the director can pull off and it comes off stumbling and almost ludicrous, even though you know what the intentions are. I picture it in their heads as a beautiful final finale, and ideally it would have been astounding. Just be prepared for a sudden turn of events by the end and a deflation.Or just don't worry and go for the ride. The process of getting there is fairly enjoyable, as is. It's a lightweight movie overall with an air of improbability that is meant to make you smile. Maybe it will.

Most of "My Piece of the Pie" functions as an odd-couple story with a timely edge on class structure and the status of the world's economy. These initial sections of the film are routine and structurally and thematically predictable, but at least they hold their own with some decent performances and a few well-placed moments of levity. But then we're smacked upside the head with a final act that's unpleasant, grossly implausible, and painfully misguided in its efforts to make a statement. It starts with that most reliable of plot devices, a surprise twist, and finishes ambiguously, satisfying writer/director Cédric Klapisch's desire to symbolically reveal the state of the world we live in. I'm not here to say that he isn't making a valid point. He is, however, going about it the wrong way.It begins in the French seaside village of Dunkirk, where, thanks to outsourcing, a factory has just been shut down. For the aptly named France (Karin Viard), a blue-collar worker, the news comes as a devastating shock, and she's introduced lying in a hospital bed after a failed suicide attempt. She's a single mom with three children, and she's now faced with the task of finding a new job. She decides to travel to Paris, where she trains to become a housekeeper. Getting her into the program requires some fudging of the truth, as it's specifically designed for immigrant women; she gets through with a Russian accent and a booming personality. She's then assigned to the luxurious apartment of a wealthy power broker named Steve (Gilles Lellouche), who has just returned to Paris after living in London for ten years.Steve is handsome, but he's also cocky, and he doesn't know the first thing about relating to women. This is evidenced by an unnecessary scene in which he tries to woo a French model by taking her on a trip to Venice, where he lavishes her with expensive gifts. He is, of course, only interested in sex, and he takes great offense when the young woman announces that she never makes love on the first date. She is but one of several women in his life. It seems the only thing Steve does know how to do is make money. France notices this, and after a very short period of time, she feels bold enough to dispense her wisdom about women. The surprising thing is that he seems willing to listen – and this is after introducing himself to her as the workaholic hardass.The situation begins to change after the unexpected revelation that Steve is the father of a little boy named Alban (Lunis Sakji). The kid is dropped off by his mother, who's about to go away on a month-long vacation to Thailand. Naturally, Steve completely forgot about this arrangement. He's now faced with taking care of a child, which he doesn't know the first thing about. Luckily, he has France, who has experience with children. He promotes her to the position of nanny, with a 100-euro salary increase as an incentive. France is thrilled by the extra money, although it comes with an unfortunate tradeoff, namely spending more and more time away from her own children, who she used to visit every weekend. In the process of staying in Paris, France pushes Steve inch by inch towards becoming a respectable man; he learns about communicating with women, he begins to appreciate his son, and he finally admits that being rich isn't making him happy.On the basis of what I've just described, you'd think this movie would do just fine as a Hollywood romantic comedy. But don't be too hasty. There's a darker side to this story, and it reveals itself not long after the aforementioned plot twist. It's founded on an innately cinematic coincidence, which would be fine were it not for the fact that Klapisch was striving for a realistic depiction of current economic conditions. What begins as implausible quickly becomes unsavory, as we learn that neither Steve nor France are as innocent as they initially seemed. We then end on an unresolved, highly unsatisfying note. There's nothing wrong with refusing to tie up stories in neat little packages, although it helps if you make sure the tone is balanced out along the way.To be sure, I know what Klapisch is trying to say: Globalization and the digital revolution have stripped the industrial world of any value it once had, thus creating a rift between finance and labor. And of course, we all want our piece of the pie. What I don't understand is why Klapisch had to make this statement in this particular way. I find it hard to accept when it relies on an ending that requires not only tremendous suspension of disbelief but also a different, less sympathetic viewpoint of its main characters. "My Piece of the Pie" has a few well-written moments, and I certainly enjoyed the performances by Viard and Lellouche, who do have natural on screen chemistry. Unfortunately, the way it ultimately delivers its message does a lot more harm than good.-- Chris Pandolfi (www.atatheaternearyou.net)

I had not great expectations for 'Ma part du gâteau'. France, 42, raising her 4 daughters alone, loses her job and goes on to work as a maid for a big bad trader. The premise seemed interesting and Klapisch certainly knows how to tell simple stories in a lively manner. But the title is really dumb and dull and I was unable to remember it for the couple of weeks prior to release. Klapisch's trademark is to use simple titles borrowed from popular phrases, but My Piece of Cake/Taking My Cut is not a visually stimulating simple idea, it's only a flat commonplace.Directors back in the Studio System could moan about not being responsible for a bad title. Klapisch, after a decade of well-deserved success, enjoys total creative control, so the title is his mistake. And it perfectly stands for the big flaws, the failure to build up something really engaging on this interesting premise.Lazy comes to my mind, yet that may be too harsh on Klapisch. He excels at brisk light comedies and may well have gone out of his league here in this attempt at social satire. If you look back at Klapisch movies, starting with 'Le Péril Jeune', you realize their strength is simplicity and rhythm. He tried his style on something more serious and under delivers. Worse, he totally misses the mark.Lazy is however the right word for an 'auteur' who earned his spot at the top, with the power to shoot whatever he wants. OK, fashionable 'auteurs' like Cédric Klapisch end up working with too many yes-men, leaving them with little challenging creative opportunities, but that's laziness all the same. Laziness to come up with such a flimsy script on such a challenging subject matter, and laziness to cast the bland Gilles Lellouche as the hyper-realistic financial shark that should have been too fascinating for our own good.If it's not laziness, that means Klapisch has risen to his level of incompetence and will only be able to dish out the same youthful light comedies again and again.